A few months ago, we were running one of our monthly Benefits Excellence Live events in London. We'd had three wonderful clients present case studies on how our service had helped them with their employee benefits and employee engagement projects and I had just presented on Reward Gateway culture.

As usual we had a good representation at the event from our client services and benefits consultants teams - all ready to talk to clients and potential clients about what we could do for them. They had nipped into a local restaurant after the event for some food and jumped in there with them.

During the lunch my iPhone buzzed - it was an email from my friends at the charity Trees for Cities where I'm a trustee saying that they had 7 tickets for the London Nightrider cycle ride - 100km around the City of London, starting at midnight in the moonlight. If they could get 7 people to do the ride it would unlock £1,225 of sponsorship that the charity really needed. But they couldn't find 7 people who would agree to give up a whole Saturday night - starting at midnight, to cycle around the City of London.

Without thinking much I said to the Reward Gateway people in front of me "Does anyone fancy volunteering for something?" - I didn't even get to say what it was before 7 hands were in the air. "But I haven't said what it is yet", I said. "We know - but we'll do it , what is it?". They were all smiling with the excitement of jumping feet first into something without even knowing what it was.

I'm sure there were many times last night that our team regretted their gung-ho "try anything" spirit, but I'm so grateful that they went through with it. 100km on a bike can't be easy any time, but surely it's harder doing it through the night when everyone else is asleep and you'd love to be in your own bed!

It's truly amazing to work in and for an organisation that has such beautiful people, so engaged, excited, enthusiastic and up for anything that life throws at them. On a daily basis we build products and services that change our market and deliver fantastic employee engagement results for our clients. We do it because we have amazing people who understand no barriers and take all challenges in their stride.

Yet again, if you need evidence of what employee engagement does for a business, if you need evidence of what a great culture can do for you, you don't need to look much further than this.